We’ve covered Kindle publishing in a variety of ways on The Side Hustle Show in the past, and it’s one of my favorite side hustles.

But one area of frustration, at least for me, is that for all the effort put into writing, editing, publishing, and launching the book, it’s still tough to sustain sales for long periods of time.

Inevitably — it seemed — there was a fade from glory and whatever top rankings you were able to achieve diminished as the weeks and months went by.

For me, how long and drawn out that decline was has varied by title, with some books making daily sales for over a year, and others disappearing from relevance fairly quickly.

My guest this week has a way to stop that decline, and it works for both books AND physical products (for all you FBA sellers out there). Dave Chesson is a successful side hustle Kindle author and SEO expert, and joins me to shed some light on Amazon’s internal search engine ranking algorithm — and how you can influence it to your advantage.

Dave runs the excellent site Kindlepreneur.com, and has written half a dozen books (under pen names to avoid potential conflict with his employer) that cumulatively earn around $4k a month.

Tune in for an insightful session on how to sell more products on Amazon.

A note of caution for anyone considering purchasing ‘Kindle Samurai’. I made a purchase immediately after listening to the podcast. I’ve been unable to get the software installed onto my computer since then (error message pops up every time), and even though I’ve contacted the seller 3 times at the e-mail given, I’ve yet to receive any assistance. I am however getting plenty of promo e-mails for their other products, and the link they provide for support is just another promo page to become an affiliate. I don’t know if the software works or not but I know the customer service is non-existent. I eventually requested a refund after days of no response and got an auto-reply saying someone would get back to me in 24 hours. That was 9 days ago and still no response to my refund request. I wish I had read the reviews before purchase because there are dozens of customers reflecting the same issues.

Hi Rema, I know it was over 8 months since you wrote that, but your comment above was instrumental in making me take action in creating my very own Software, KDPRocket.com. It does everything that Kindle Samurai does and MORE! It even tells you the estimated Amazon Searches per month. If you were to contact me, I’d like to give you a free copy because A). I’m sorry you experienced that based off of my recommendtion and B) because you taking the time to comment was very constructive and important. Hit me up at KDPRocket.com/support or through Kindlepreneur’s contact page.

I am just wondering if I should use KDP rocket together with KD spy? I did a bit of research on both softwares. It seems that KD spy would be a good start to search for a niche category while KDP rocket is good for reseraching and inputting the 7 keyword ideas?

I hope to have your honest feedback because it would be expensive for me to purchase both softwares and I would rather to use only for the best value and results.. thanks!

As the creator of KDP Rocket, you’ll have to excuse me of any bias feelings on the matter ;)

I think you’re right in the assessment, though. KD Spy is the better at category selection while KDP Rocket gives more detail on the market as a whole such as average earnings of the top books for a search, estimated traffic for each term, competition score (more detailed), etc.

Phase I: Research – In this area you want to find keywords that people are actually searching for, that are profitable and aren’t too competitive that you can’t beat them. You also want to make sure that your book is a good fit for that keyword as you’ll see in phase III. Just because you get #1 for a super broad term, does not mean that your book will convert there.

Phase II: Once you’ve selected keywords, you need to make sure Amazon will index your book on their website for that term – meaning if someone types in that term, your book will show you ‘somewhere’ in the results. Could be first page, 2nd or even 78th. Where you initially show up depends on how competitive that term is as well as how fitting your book is to the term (as in how many indicators show you should be there). Ways to get indexed is:
a. Choosing one of your 7 kindle keywords
b. Keyword in title and or subtitle
c. Keyword in description
d. Keyword seen in reviews

Phase III: So you’re ranking somewhere..but how do you get it to #1 for that term? Now comes the important part. Amazon is all about “what makes Amazon more money.” The following metrics are about showing Amazon that your book makes them more money and makes customers happier when they find your book at the top over others:
1. Click to sales ratio – if someone types in that term, finds your book, clicks it and buys it, then they just send Amazon a signal that YOUR book was the best. But if they keep choosing others over your book, then you’ll drop. Covers, descriptions and ranking for terms you should play into this. Also, if you know certain people are DEFINITELY going to buy your book, instead of just sending them the link, tell them to go to Amazon, type in that particular keyword, find your book and purchase it. I had Carol Tice of Makealivingwriting.com do this one tactic and with only 10 people she ranked #1 for a very competitive term in as little as 2 days.
2. Recent Verified Reviews and review grades: Shows customers still like your book and they are happy with the product. Ways to improve this is to request for a review at the end of your book and humanize yourself before asking. I’ve got a couple of articles on Kindlepreneur about tactics to get better reviews (legally).

Our Estimated Amazon Searches per month is based on book popularity on Amazon, traffic across amazon as a whole and some other factors. Again, it is an estimation since Amazon does not give that information out.

However, we wanted people to have a quick way to see how popular a term is on Amazon and understand the possibility of finding new and untapped niches, as well as see where there might still be enough room in the market for your entry.